Creativity – lessons from Google

Google is universally regarded as one of the most creative and innovative companies as well as being one of the most profitable. One of the key ingredients to Google’s success has been their uncompromising commitment and integration to what they refer to as “Google’s Nine Innovation Principles”. Take a moment to reflect on these and ask yourself; “to what extent are these principles reflected in my habits of mind and action?” 

· Innovation, not instant perfection
Start rough, learn and iterate.

· Ideas come from everywhere
Ideas can come from the engineers, managers, users even the financial team.

· Share everything you can
Everything is put on the intranet, so employees know what is happening.

· You’re brilliant, we’re hiring
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favour intelligence over experience.

· A license to pursue dreams
Letting employees use 20% of their time on what ever they want.

· Data is apolitical
There is no “I like”, it is all about the basing decisions on data.

· Creativity loves constraints
Engineers thrive on constraints.

· It’s users, not money
If you can successfully engage users, you can monetize them

· Don’t kill projects, morph them
Products that doesn’t seem to respond well in the market should be morphed into something the market needs, not cancelled